


Happy Birthday

by justwhatialwayswanted



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Occlumency, Snapshots, haha idk you won't find it here, house troubles, i wrote this instead of doing homework, i'm pretty sure orion and walburga are their parents?, if not then oh well, is this angst idk, it's pretty angst-y just so you know, my first attempt at angst, pretend that they are, regulus and sirius are Not Friends, there is house strife, what is dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 12:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6610990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justwhatialwayswanted/pseuds/justwhatialwayswanted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regulus Black should be eighteen years and five days old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this instead of doing homework or working on any of my other fics (cough cough, They Just Can't Catch A Break) that I haven't updated in forever.

Regulus Black is eleven when he and his brother stop being friends.

He doesn’t blame Sirius for being sorted Gryffindor, he really doesn’t, even if their parents do, but it seems like Sirius is determined to blame him for being sorted Slytherin.

A few weeks after starting school, Regulus calls Sirius’s name in the hallway. Sirius doesn’t turn around. And that’s where it starts, Sirius pretending Regulus doesn’t exist, and eventually Regulus does the same.

It takes him a long time before he understands why, sees that for Sirius, Slytherin means their parents, and Sirius hates their parents.

So now he hates Regulus too.

Regulus tries to forget he has an older brother at all.

 

Regulus Black is fourteen when he learns Occlumency.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust his friends, not that he has anything to hide. He just doesn’t want any of them to know what’s going on in his head. They could be seeing his thoughts right now.

So Regulus teaches himself. He doesn’t ask anyone else for help or even mention that he’s learning it. He duplicates the library books instead of checking one out and hides his copies in the back of his trunk, concealed by his vast array of socks--nobody will look there.

He’s perfected it within six months--he always was a quick learner. He debates about learning Legilimency, but he decides against it. Regulus doesn’t want to have such a potent weapon, even if he knows how to control it. He just wants to protect himself.

 

Regulus Black is fifteen when he learns Legilimency anyway.

 

When he graduates Hogwarts, Regulus is seventeen. His friends join the Death Eaters. Regulus joins with them.

His Occlumency is perfect. When Lord Voldemort uses it on all of them, he never even suspects that Regulus might be hiding things. Regulus doesn’t use Legilimency on the Dark Lord, he doesn’t have a death wish, but he knows Voldemort suspects nothing only because he is alive and sane.

 

When Regulus is almost eighteen, he starts looking for a way out.

He sticks newspaper clippings about the things the Death Eaters and their leader have done to the walls of his bedroom, so that he can try to find a chink in Voldemort’s armor, but also because seeing it every day when he wakes up reminds him how much he wants to leave.

 

Regulus is eighteen years old, exactly, when he learns about the Horcrux.

Voldemort asks to borrow Kreacher, but Regulus thinks nothing of it until Kreacher returns and tells him about a dark cavern, an underground lake full of corpses, a horrible potion that Voldemort asked him to drink, and the corpses that reanimated to try and drag him under the waters.

Regulus guesses he can consider it a birthday present. He has something he can do now. He never thought he would actively work against Voldemort, Regulus just wants to go home and not torture people or raid houses or have that ugly thing on his arm, red like a brand--and he supposes it is one, saying, _You_   _belong to Voldemort._

Regulus never thought he would be a part of the resistance, but the longer they fight the harder it is to not take a side.

He'll do something about the Horcrux, he just isn't sure what yet.

 

Regulus is eighteen years and two days old when he makes the copy of Slytherin’s locket, transfiguring a plainer one to the right shape and size and asking Kreacher about every detail on it.

 

He’s eighteen years and three days old when he orders Kreacher to come with him to the lake.

  
And Regulus should be eighteen years and five days old when Sirius hears that he is dead.


End file.
